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This Is How You Lose The Time War
Écrit par Amal El-Mohtar et Max Gladstone
Raconté par Cynthia Farrell et Emily Woo Zeller
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Hugo-winning novella…
This Hugo Award-winning novella contains the chaos of all of time and space within its beautifully short, never-ending love story. Two women, named Red and Blue, fight for opposite factions in the ceaseless time war, flowing from the past to the future, from timeline to timeline. Through a series of letters sent via tea and lava and other delightful delivery systems, Red and Blue fall for each other, and combine for some of the best purple prose around.
Description
Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters-and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.
Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works. Right?
Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.
Actions du livre
Commencer à écouterInformations sur le livre
This Is How You Lose The Time War
Écrit par Amal El-Mohtar et Max Gladstone
Raconté par Cynthia Farrell et Emily Woo Zeller
Note de l'éditeur
Hugo-winning novella…
This Hugo Award-winning novella contains the chaos of all of time and space within its beautifully short, never-ending love story. Two women, named Red and Blue, fight for opposite factions in the ceaseless time war, flowing from the past to the future, from timeline to timeline. Through a series of letters sent via tea and lava and other delightful delivery systems, Red and Blue fall for each other, and combine for some of the best purple prose around.
Description
Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters-and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.
Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works. Right?
Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.
À propos de l'auteur
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Avis
This was such a painfully lovely, and rewarding read. The characters felt so real and it so beautiful to watch it progress through letters.
Rating: 5Beautifully written. It gave me hope and feelings of love in a complex masterful story.
Rating: 5
This is the sort of book you either love or whose beauty you appreciate but find fundamentally confusing and uninteresting. I am in the latter category. It is prettily written and the love story is cute.
But I found it very frustrating to not understand the science/magic or the reasons or origins of the war. The idea is ok but I found the end result lacked substance.
Rating: 2But I found it very frustrating to not understand the science/magic or the reasons or origins of the war. The idea is ok but I found the end result lacked substance.
Pretentious and beautiful. I know I spelled one of those 2 words correctly.
Rating: 5Wonderful story. Very well written and engaging from start to finish. More science fantasy then science fiction, but great read none the less.
Rating: 5This was a very strange book. It's basically a love story between two entities that develops as they encounter each other up and down the time lines on opposite sides and grow to respect each other and then more. Told mostly through letters to each other sent by many original and creative means and media, since their superiors would view any contact with justifiable suspicion. The two authors apparently each took on one of the characters. Because of the structure, it was hard for me to lose myself in the story and, despite the sf trappings, it really is lyrical romantic writing for the most part. Points given for originality, points deleted for the lack of narrativium, verdict undecided.
Rating: 3I love a good time travel book, and this is very much a good time travel book. Also suspense, romance, and a number of other things. Lush language, science so futuristic it is indeed magic, rich and detailed world building, a slow roll of fascinating little pieces, each with a richness of imagination and detail. This is a complex and evocative story, of two hereditary enemies working both against and with (under the noses of their respective bosses) each other. Also surreal.
Rating: 5Poetry in love letters, a world built of time in correspondence. I am no good at analyzing, instead all I can say is that I was swept up immediately into the world of these two voices that Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone realize in exquisite prose.
Rating: 5I love the multiple layers of story twisting around each other in this weird, emotional, awesome work. The ending is really great.
Rating: 5Through time and alternate realities, Red and Blue chase each other and fall in love against the wishes of their superiors, sending letters to each other in the bubbles in boiling water and the bones of animals sent to kill. It was too internal for me—the people who died around them seemed irrelevant; the time war was pointless as far as I could tell. But if you like weird love stories and trippy imagery, it might work for you.
Rating: 3Red and Blue are operatives on opposite sides of the Time War. They travel through time and space on threads sabotaging and un-doing each other's work. They are each the best operative on their side. Red works for The Agency, a giant machine. Blue works for The Garden, a vast consciousness embedded in all organic matter. After years of this competitive game between them they become obsessed with each other. They start leaving each other messages through time and space in unique and untraceable ways. If they were to get caught they would be killed by their people as unreliable and a traitor. Red becomes aware that there is a shadow presence stalking them through their missions. They devise even more clever ways to communicate and the game turns into the strangest love story ever. This is a strange and lovely book. It takes a while to figure out what's happening but by the end all the pieces click into place. Recommended.
Rating: 4This book starts out really weird: for the first few chapters, I wasn't sure I wanted to continue because it was so weird that it didn't really make sense. But then it becomes a surprisingly sweet love story. It's delightfully original. Two women are fighting on opposite sides of the Time War: they both travel through time to influence history to make it go the way their side wants. They start leaving letters for each other, hidden in strange and fascinating ways.
Rating: 4This is a near perfect book for me - short, tells a full story, interesting characters that are manage to fully human while being something else. I love the letter writing - Blue is much more poetic, Red a bit more matter of fact. Just enough of the time war is given for readers to understand how it works, and the two societies are put together - Red's society being technical based, Blue's society being biological based. Both societies are ruthless and caring in their own ways.
Rating: 4I couldn't always follow the action and intrigue in this confusing little book, but the story at the heart really grabbed me. Two time travelers on opposing sides of a war being waged throughout all of history for control of the future find themselves engaged in a battle of wits that leads to them becoming, um, pen pals. One is from a society based in nature and biology, while the other is from one of technology and machines, but they have respect for each other's capabilities and are excited by the added dimension the correspondence gives to their forever seesawing game of cat and mouse. In a realm where paranoia is the rule of the day, what happens when the person trying to kill you seems more trustworthy than the person giving you orders?
Rating: 4This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is a very descriptive, unique and beautifully written story about two rival time travelers — Red and Blue — who end up falling in love through the letters they exchange oftentimes in very discrete and creative ways). The characters were well developed through their narrative and the storyline was interesting but I felt that the novel was lacking in some ways. Throughout the book I was curious about their backgrounds, Red and Blue’s history, the details of the worlds and the factions each was fighting for and ultimately why they were at war. I would have liked some more “meat” to the story even though I suspect that was not the intention of the authors. The ending was good and left me a bit more satisfied with the story. Overall I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Rating: 3Pros: interesting characters, quick paced, touching romance Cons: limited worldbuilding Red and Blue work for opposing sides of a war trying to make sure their particular futures come true. Their battles happen across the varieties of time and parallel universes. Their rivalry intensifies when Blue leaves Red a letter, beginning a correspondence that changes them both. This is a longer novella, easily read in an afternoon. Which is good as it gets pretty intense towards the end and I’m not sure I could have put it down those last 50 pages. The two protagonists were written by different authors, giving them distinct voices. The book follows the pattern of showing a scene from Red’s point of view, followed by a letter and the actions of a mysterious stranger, then shifts to Blue’s point of view and a letter she received. I was impressed by how much the characters changed over the course of the story given the brevity of the text. With novellas I often feel the story could be fleshed out more, but this felt like the perfect length. The shortness even added to the tension. The science is very hand-wavy so don’t expect the usual time travel rules to apply. The addition of multiple universes made me wonder how they could track the changes meant to bring about their futures, but none of that is explored or explained at all. The story is focused entirely on the two characters. It’s a great, unique story.
Rating: 5Many time travel books are non-linear to some degree. But this book charts a whole new path when it comes to non-linearity. To be fair, the specifics of where are when are somewhat beside the point, but the places and times the characters go to have very few recognizable features, which leaves the reading without a hook on which to make sense of the narrative (if it can be called that). It's kind of like reading abstract art. Like abstract art, a very few things come into focus by the end if you stare at them long enough, but it requires way too much effort. If you like that kind of thing, carry on, but it's really not for me. And yes, I already know I'm a philistine when it comes to art.
Rating: 1This book has something, but it's not for me. In all the time hopping there was no sense of connection to place or period of flavor of such. A epistolary love story whose means I found more intriguing than it's content.
Rating: 3
The writing of this book is so poetic that I honestly do not have enough brain cells for this. There were a lot of things that just went over my head that I had to reread some parts in the ebook while I was listening to the audiobook and even then it really didn't sink in that much. BUT! Despite my struggle, the plot and Red and Blue's dynamics really sucked me in that I just wanted to keep going. I wanted to know what would happen to them both and how things would unfold between them.
The development between Red and Blue and the things they went through was an emotional roller coaster. I wanted things to go positively for both of them but this is war and... this is war. Make of that what you will.
This is definitely a book I want to reread one of these days, in print preferably, so I can absorb and internalize the words better. I feel like this is a book I would read repeatedly.
Despite my difficulties with this book, I still found myself loving it and I really can't explain why. Maybe because it's written in letters between them and I'm a sucker for that kind of writing. Whatever it is, I just really love this book.
P.S. I love Blue's voice in contrast to Red and I really enjoyed how this was narrated.
Rating: 5The development between Red and Blue and the things they went through was an emotional roller coaster. I wanted things to go positively for both of them but this is war and... this is war. Make of that what you will.
This is definitely a book I want to reread one of these days, in print preferably, so I can absorb and internalize the words better. I feel like this is a book I would read repeatedly.
Despite my difficulties with this book, I still found myself loving it and I really can't explain why. Maybe because it's written in letters between them and I'm a sucker for that kind of writing. Whatever it is, I just really love this book.
P.S. I love Blue's voice in contrast to Red and I really enjoyed how this was narrated.
A fairy tale romance with a magical science-fiction setting. The setting is more a collection of random sci-fi tropes thrown together poetically (for alliteration and vivid imagery) than anything coherent. The protagonists are not human, and since they don't know each other and rarely even see each other, to me their romance came across as more than a little creepy, like they are both stalkers. The letters between these thousand-year-old time magicians seem to have been written by love-struck teenagers; I found this quite bizarre. For all that, it is a fast read, and I can't remember reading a science-fiction fairy tale before. > Red wins a battle between starfleets in the far future of Strand 2218. As the great Gallumfry lists planetward, raining escape pods, as battle stations wilt like flowers tossed into flame, as radio bands crackle triumph and swiftskimmers swoop after fleeing voidtails, as guns speak their last arguments into mute space, she slips away. The triumph feels stale and swift. She used to love such fire. Now it only reminds her of who’s not there.> Dear Raspberry, It's not that I never noticed before how many red things there are in the world. It's that they were never any more relevant to me than green or white or gold. Now it's as if the whole world sings to me in petals, feathers, pebbles, blood. Not that it didn't before—Garden loves music with a depth impossible to sound—but now its song's for me alone.
Rating: 2
Everything about this book is pure magic. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve listened to it.
Rating: 5
This is the strangest, most romantic book I've ever read, and I loved every aching moment of it.
P.S. The narration is superb.
Rating: 5P.S. The narration is superb.
You lose by starting in the first place.
Rating: 1I actually liked this book, which surprised me because I'm not a sci-fi fan. But I am a fan of beautiful writing, which this book has. It is poetic and sparse but conveys a lot of information. I'm also a fan of strongly developed characters, which this book also has. As the novel unfolds, we see the protagonists, Red and Blue, develop and change. The book doesn't have a lot of details of the various worlds Blue and Red inhabit, or how they get from one to the other, but I wouldn't have found that important anyway.This is, at it's core, a story about rivalries, loyalties and love. With a bit of time travel, alternative universes and war on the side.
Rating: 4
Simply amazing. I could not recommend this book more. Read or listen and enjoy a wonderful tale of two foes becoming intertwined through all of time.
Rating: 5What a wild ride! Two time travelers on opposite sides of a war keep crossing paths. Through different strands they write beautiful letters to each other. The worlds they describe are completely unique and despite the sci-fi elements, it’s pure poetry. Red and Blue dance around each other from a distance while trying to hide their connection from their commanders. This is an adventure and love story worth diving into. “Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another.”“I have built a you within me, or you have. I wonder what of me there is in you.”
Rating: 5This book broke me in the best way.
It’s hard to put into words how deeply it moved me. It has a science fiction backdrop but it is above all a love story. The words are beautiful, lyrical. There’s beauty and tragedy and points where you don’t know where one ends and the other begins. It fosters a sense of deep longing. It cracked open my chest and crawled inside, it lives there now. I think this is one of those rare stories that I’m going to find myself coming back to over and over again.
Rating: 5It’s hard to put into words how deeply it moved me. It has a science fiction backdrop but it is above all a love story. The words are beautiful, lyrical. There’s beauty and tragedy and points where you don’t know where one ends and the other begins. It fosters a sense of deep longing. It cracked open my chest and crawled inside, it lives there now. I think this is one of those rare stories that I’m going to find myself coming back to over and over again.
Sign me up for all the poetry sci-fi out there, please.
Rating: 5
This is a wonderful, complex, beautifully constructed novella, a love story between two operatives from opposite sides of a time war.
Red, we gradually learn, is an operative of the side that's building a technologically advanced future culture. Blue is an operative of the side that relies on biological science, the side that is called Garden. They encounter each other, at a distance at first, as they work on their respective assignments, increasingly assigned--as the best operatives each side has--to undo each other's work.
And then they start exchanging letters.
That's dangerous, and they use increasingly complex methods to make their letters secure against their superiors--but of course that can't work forever. Then things get even more complicated.
This story is an absolute delight to listen to.
Rating: 5Red, we gradually learn, is an operative of the side that's building a technologically advanced future culture. Blue is an operative of the side that relies on biological science, the side that is called Garden. They encounter each other, at a distance at first, as they work on their respective assignments, increasingly assigned--as the best operatives each side has--to undo each other's work.
And then they start exchanging letters.
That's dangerous, and they use increasingly complex methods to make their letters secure against their superiors--but of course that can't work forever. Then things get even more complicated.
This story is an absolute delight to listen to.